Forgive me if I start with a bit of editorialising, but I just have to say it: the first chapter of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary contains my favourite sentence in any book, ever. It's the bit where Flaubert introduces us to the small market town ...

REVIEW: Madame Bovary (M) 118mins ★★★ I'm not sure we need another adaptation of Flaubert's esteemed novel, let alone another period piece with Mia Wasikowska in flattened hair and furrowed brow, but there you have it. Echoing her ...

Who reads books anymore? Old people, that's who. But it takes a special kind of adult to turn literary passion into obsession, which is exactly what Martin (Fabrice Luchini) of Gemma Bovery does. Martin is infatuated with Gustave Flaubert's most ...

It may be, as the proverb states, that inside every fat person there is a thin one trying to get out, but it is likely not true that inside every great novel there is a fine film struggling to be made. A case in point, and not for the first time, is ...

DAILY REVIEW RATING: From Gustave Flaubert to Woody Allen, the subject of infidelity has proved to be fertile literary ground for countless writers. No wonder: violating all sorts of social and evolutionary codes, unfaithfulness in ...

published about 3 hours ago Mia Hansen-Løve recreates the heady rush of 90s Paris clubland in an evocative essay on youth and experienceOh, to have been young and French at the dawn of the Parisian house music scene, when Daft Punk were but a ...

Flaubert was obviously no stranger to writing school reports. The gap between what we say and what we mean is often the loneliest, longest space. Language, properly used, should shatter Jericho with its precision and economy. Most of our speech is ...

A film offers a new take on the classic novel. Gemma Bovery, the new French film directed by Anne Fontaine (Coco before Chanel) and based on the witty graphic novel by Posy Simmonds, is something of a satiric take on Flaubert's famous novel Madame ...